Fewer dollars to go around for smaller Rockford street repairs

Tuesday

May 28, 2013 at 12:01 AMMay 28, 2013 at 12:45 PM

ROCKFORD — As barricades go up and lanes are closed throughout the city, aldermen and city staff are busy deciding which roads will make it onto this year’s construction plan and which will have to wait another year.

Greg Stanley

ROCKFORD — As barricades go up and lanes are closed throughout the city, aldermen and city staff are busy deciding which roads will make it onto this year’s construction plan and which will have to wait another year.

The city plans differently for repairs to major streets and busy throughways than it does for smaller roads tucked in neighborhoods and subdivisions.

Major traffic arteries like Harrison Avenue and 20th Street are long-planned out, part of the city’s rolling five-year capital improvement plan. The multi-year, multi-million-dollar projects to rebuild state roads like West State and North Main streets have also been in the works for years.

But for many of the neighborhood roads and the crumbling alleyways in older parts of town, repairs are prioritized and approved by the alderman of the ward. The 14 aldermen of the city wards get an equal slice of money for neighborhood road repairs each year. This year that amount is about $350,000 per ward.

The city’s Second Ward, made up of the hilly neighborhoods that border the Sinnissippi Golf Course and Keith Creek, will spend almost its entire budget on alley repairs this year.

That’s fine for Jay Larson, who lives on 15th Street and is active with the Keith Creek Neighborhood Association.

“Most of us have garages in the alleys, so we’re using them all the time and they can get neglected,” Larson said. “It’s always an ongoing thing.”

Prioritizing ward repair money is part of a comprehensive process between staff and aldermen, said Patrick Zuroske, capital program manager.

“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle where we’re trying to fit areas of need with a budget and with contracts,” he said. “We get better deals when we can group these projects geographically.”

One of the key factors that determines a road’s priority is its Pavement Condition Index rating. The condition of every road’s pavement is rated on a scale of 0-100. The pavement condition doesn’t tell the full story of a road, and leaves out factors like its age, truck traffic patterns and utility needs, but it’s a useful tool for prioritizing construction, Zuroske said.

The 11th Ward in the southeast side of town has the worst overall pavement condition rating. The ward is anchored by Broadway and Seventh Street, with Harrison Avenue as its southern border.

The money allocated to Ald. Karen Elyea, D-11, is enough to repair one block of one street: 22nd Avenue, between Fifth and Sixth streets. The project involves installing curb and gutter, which will eat up much of the budget. The rest will be spent on repairing six alleys that have been left to rubble.

“It’s not like in other wards where you can just lay on another coat of asphalt. We really have to redo everything,” Elyea said.

Further to the south, Marshall Street and Wills Avenue will be rebuilt as the city slowly catches Sixth Ward roads up to drainage standards. Many of the ward’s roads were inherited from the county in early 1990s and weren’t built with drainage systems. Almost the entire Sixth Ward budget will be eaten up on the two small roads.

Engineers have known for a while that 2013 and 2014 would be difficult on neighborhood streets because more money has been diverted to bigger projects, Zuroske said. The city is balancing the neighborhood needs with construction on an Auburn and Main streets roundabout, a new Morgan Street bridge and South Main and West State streets and Harrison Avenue reconstruction — all multi-million-dollar projects.

As the city gets over the hump, more money will be available for neighborhood roads, Zuroske said.

Greg Stanley: 815-987-1369; gstanley@rrstar.com; @greggstanley

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